


come healing

by AceQueenKing



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Set roughly between Zagreus' 8th and 10th runs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:47:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28298463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: Megeara punishes oathbreakers, but it's not until Zagreus intercedes that she decides to go after the once-queen of the underworld, who abandoned her throne.
Relationships: Megaera & Persephone (Hades Video Game), Megaera & Zagreus (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 79
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	come healing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brella](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/gifts).



Megaera was born from violence.

  
She does not remember this. Not the first cut that twined her and her sisters from the titans whose blood she inherited, nor the mother who clasped her to her bosom, still dripping wet and confused with the violence she had been born from. She remembers too —distantly —when, many years later, when the lord came down to the underworld, a soft coup against her mother who was only too trusting, too willing to think of it as a partnership.

She had not approved. Not of the man, not of the murals, not of his ostentatiousness nor his capriciousness. But she did approve of one thing: the assignment she was given when the man fell down from heaven.

"You want me to punish them?" She asked, standing before his huge table. He had always been a giant, the literal embodiment of the sky falling down on the world below. She did not mind this role, truthfully.

"Only the oath breakers." The man barely glanced at her, and she liked it that way. A clear role.

"On your word," she had said, and he had let her go.

And from them on, that was her role: to whip the cheaters into repentance, to leave the thieves blind and begging. And for a long time, she was happy enough with that.

***

Persephone came to them and she smelled the stench of a broken oath upon her. Like her sisters ahead of her, Megaera smelt it immediately.

"This is our queen," the boss intoned. "You will treat her with the same respect you have accorded me."

The usurper’s voice was gentler than usual; odd. Ordinarily, the usurper could see through souls as easily as Megaera could, but he could not yet sense the new one's perfidy.

"Sure," she'd said, younger then, but already aware that silence was truly golden. She didn't trust the first interloper; she would not trust the second.

"Just — call me Persephone," the queen said. She pressed a flower into Megaera’s hand, a little sweetness, but Megaera was not fooled. She smelled the bitter scent of broken promises — but it was faint, and the flower was nice, and so, she did nothing.

The queen waved to her, and she felt trouble upon her shoulders. The queen seemed to be a nice sort of woman. Even Alecto, her brutal sister, softened her sharp-toothed grin when the queen passed.

She hoped, for a long time, that she was imagining things.

But she was not.

***

The queen was there. The queen was good. The faint scent of burning clove did not quite leave her, but her station kept Megaera from asking questions about it. So far as the usurper was concerned, the background of the queen was not of interest. Megaera took it as permission to avoid her duties as far as the usurper's bride.

Unlike the usurper, though, the woman was born to be a queen. She received the souls with a compassion that Megaera could not understand. She did not ask, for such was not part of her station. Megaera was blood and fury and biting. Her job did not require compassion. She could only admire such from afar.

And then, the queen abdicated. Left. In the middle of the night, on an especially dark night. There was little doubt Nyx, mother-in-name-and-deed-if-not-in-blood, had had her hand in it. The usurper had read her note, over and over and over, and though Megaera could not know what was enclosed inside it, she did not need to know its wording to know that such was permanent.

And then everything changed, again.

The usurper-king turned harder and angrier: he rarely interceded in her punishments, but when he did, he did so to order her to offer less mercy than before: hit the shades harder, punish them more, to make their tears flow until Asphodel itself overflowed with mortal (and immortal) wrath and anger.

The queen was gone. Mother was of no use in advising her, suddenly busy with a child whose origins were a mystery, with mother herself swearing an oath to speak no word of his origins. She overheard mother claim once that such was the issue of the usurper herself and could not imagine when such had taken place; she did not ask. It was not her business.

Her brothers, young, barely remembered. Her sisters, so close to her in blood and so far from her in bond, offered little help. Tisiphone did not care; no one had died. Alecto did not care; the usurper's anger had sent her thriving, her rage at the injustice of the situation giving her power beyond compare.

There was something about Alecto that Megaera could never quite decide if she admired or feared; either way, they spent many years in blood, and sweat, and bone. The usurper grew more embittered. Mother grew more worried. The boy grew up, and his origins became obvious, though she did not say for such was never her place.

And then, one day, sitting in Styx's temple after Sisyphus had a rather impassioned escape attempt, she smelled something she had not smelled in many, many years: the unique scent of the queen, crushed flowers mixed with the scent of cloves.

It could only be the oath breaker. And it was odd, Megaera thought, that she would dwell so close to the home she had once fled.

But the scent was gone before she could examine it too closely, and Megaera had enough souls to whip into shape that she put it out of her mind.

For a time.

***

It was Zagreus, as always, who tipped the scales.

Zagreus was a good man; better than the usurper in a lot of ways. But he tended to open his heart early and often, and even caught as they were, fighting to the death (irritably, more often than not anymore, hers), she could tell he was vulnerable.

"Her name is Persephone, my mother." He said, in one of those rare moments in the lounge when she'd had enough patience to sit there and listen to him babble over contraband he absolutely had not given her for good reasons but which she would do her duty in getting rid of immediately. There was a long pause; she filled it with a sip.

"My mother." He said. "She's wonderful. You should see her house."

And Zagreus listed things that could not exist, in the underworld, at least. And she saw the light in his eyes, the love in his heart.

And she knew she had to talk to the woman before it was too late, because Zagreus was falling fast for a lifestyle he could not and would not ever have.

The itch, it seemed, would finally have to be scratched.

***

It was not that hard for Megaera to make it up to the tip of the underworld. Slip a bit of contraband to Charon and he was more than glad to find the way out, at least for everyone he wasn't explicitly forbidden to. A quick, relaxing boat ride — Charon, better than most, understood her enjoyment of silence — and she was up on the surface, whip in tow.

She did not like the surface.

The light hurt her eyes; the snow hurt her toes. It smelled unfamiliar; the humans were more complicated, their life's balances not yet completed, measured, and judged. She did not like anything about the world above. She could not imagine any true underworld denizen enjoying it.

But Zagreus had been born of surface-dwellers. And perhaps there-in laid the difference.

Still, she walked; it was not far, she thought, from where Zagreus had come out, and she had made sure to ask Charon to drop her in the same area. He couldn't last on the surface — not more than hours, she thought, judging by how long it was taking between hearing Hypnos greet the boss, and then Hypnos great Zagreus, from the comfort of her seat in the lounge.

It took her a couple of hours, but she found it relatively quickly: the tell-tale drift of snow into greenery, so vivid that it made her already aching eyes ache further. She followed the small drippings of greenery until they fell into a verdant grove, then followed the path hewn there. It was better; the sun burned at her skin but the feeling became less oppressive as she walked through the shade from multiple trees as she walked up the path.

And then, not far from the underworld, there she was: Persephone. The queen, though she was not dressed in the regalia that Megaera remembered her in. The outfit was strange: a bright white, her hair held by a mortal braid.

She stared at her for a long moment before the woman looked up.

"Megaera?" The Queen looked at her, a surprise on her face. She smiled, and Megaera's gut twisted. The woman thought this a happy occasion. It was not.

"Yes." Her tone all but slapped the Queen around the face. She felt more than saw as the kind-smiling woman drew back into the rigidity of her former position; she did not need a scepter to seem royal all the same. The placidity reminded her of her mother; a sort of peace that Megaera, born of the screaming and baying of blood, had never felt.

"Not a social visit?" She pursed her lips in what might have been a pout.

"No," Megaera said. "It's about Zagreus."

"Zagreus?" The woman stared at her, and there was, unspoken, a sort of tet-a-tet. _How much do you know?_ asked Persephone's brow, furrowed with conflict over whether to play dumb or admit she knew the boy. _I know enough_ , Megaera thought and gave her a stare of her own. All too quickly, Persephone relented. Perhaps she suspected that like Zagreus, Megaera did not have much time. Though untrue, Megaera did not correct her.

"Yes," Persephone said, softly. "Quite right. What about my son?" Her look was proud and defiant; a typical sinner. Megaera’s hands itched for the whip, though she did not reach for it.

"You need to leave him alone." The queen physically recoiled; she could see the new wrinkles on the woman's brow as she grimaced and wondered if the queen was aware how long she had been away from home: Zagreus had grown up from an annoying little brother to a surprisingly competent man. "He's got ideas in his head. Ideas that can't happen."

She expected the Queen to protest, as so many sinners did. Instead, she seemed to almost draw into herself; she moved away from Megaera, sitting down at her little table. "Yes, he — he does seem a stubborn boy. Gets that from his father."

Megaera did not take the bait; the usurper's name would not earn any pity from her, not when Zagreus was concerned.

"I don't want to see him hurt. You know as well as I do, that he can't keep coming here, dying over and over and over. That's just the facts of it." She nearly added _my queen_ to the end out of habit, then thought better of it. She was no longer a queen. " _This_ filling his hands with dreams that you do—that can't happen again. I won't allow it."

Persephone sighed. She looked up at Megaera. "Noted." She stood to her full height and held out her hands. "I suppose you'll be taking me, then?"

They stared at each other for one long moment, and she realized the queen realized her own guilt and complicity. Her hand moved toward her whip, the titan-blood within her calling out for justice.

But she remembered the queen she knew, once; the one who had given her a flower, when she did not know what such was. Who had shown her kindness, when she did know how to.

She did not wish to make the woman pay for such kindness with ever-lasting sorrows. 

"It's well within my rights to take you." She tried to eye up the woman but only found Persephone staring back, her eyes damnably kind once more.

"Your duty." She smiled, and the smile was sad. "I have been expecting you for a long time. When Zagreus first came, for a moment..." She trailed off, and Megaera looked away. She knew what she meant, what she feared. She hated that she had proven the woman right.

 _Take he_ r _,_ her blood called. _Make her scream, make her beg._

"I'll make sure he does not blame you for doing this," she said softly. "Either of them."

"Meaningless talk." And she knew, too, that that would not work; Persephone could have all the kind words in the world and could perhaps convince the usurper to pardon a subordinate who dared to lay a finger upon her, but Zagreus would never talk to her again, and truthfully, that was worse.

"Here." The Queen advanced toward her, bent down toward the ground. What was she planning? Some sort of elaborate ruse? Megaera’s hand gripped her whip tighter, though she still did not draw it. Instead, she focused on Persephone's fingers, watching as the warm light that gathered between her fingers gently grew into a tendril of some strange plant, then a flower: a vibrant but pale purple and white, with a bright yellow stem. Then, with the brutal efficiency of the queen of the underworld, she plucked the divine flower.

It reminded her of another day, long ago, when the queen offered her a flower. Was this pity?

"Hollyhock," she said, simply. "It shouldn't spoil. Not for a little while. Give it to Zagreus, would you? Now, let's go."

Megaera looked at the flower and gently took it; a delicate thing, it seemed impossible that such a thing could grow here. She crushed the flower between her fingers, and Persephone gave off a soft cry of surprise. Megaera felt a little bad about it and irked that she felt bad.

"I'm not taking you. Not today." She did not look at the woman as she gave her mercy. "Just be careful. Zagreus is...important. But he is kind. Sometimes, too much so."

"Thank you," she said, gingerly; Megaera could not imagine she was anything but relieved, but there was almost a hint of sadness to her. "I'll tell him he can't...come back. You're right, Megaera. We shouldn't think about things that cannot be."

"Well." She turned back; it was for the best, though it was clear from her eyes that the queen found such a rather sad prospect. "I suppose we're done."

"I suppose so." Persephone sat down once more, but the energy went out of her. Megaera wished she could show the pity that Persephone had shown her, but such had never been in her nature. She could not help but be what she was.

"Will you return?" Persephone asked, suddenly. She could not answer. There was a punishment needed, but she did not wish to give it. But nor could she tell the woman that she was, essentially, freed by virtue of her position.

So she gave a non-answer.

"Will you?" She asked. And to her surprise, the woman looked thoughtful, as if the possibility had not quite occurred to her.

But she, too, did not answer.

"We're done for now," Megaera said. And with that, she stalked out of the glen. Persephone did not call after her. It was not until she called Charon for a ride back that she realized she still had the flower, crushed between her hands.

***

As usual, it was Zagreus who did the impossible.

She was drinking in her room, passing around a rare bit of contraband from Zagreus that she was sharing, begrudgingly, with her sisters. The walls shuddered. Tisiphone looked up.

"Murd....der?"

"No, you idiot." Alecto was not grinning; she looked in alarm at Megaera. "Someone's opened the gates."

There weren't many who could. Even Zagreus was without the power to bend the underworld's doors to his will. Such was a power nested only with the usurper, and his queen.

"She's returned," Alecto said, then laughed. She downed her drink. "Well. I suppose we'll have to greet her. Son of a bitch." Alecto grinned, and Megaera did not like that grin. "Think he'll have us hang her from the meat hooks? After all this time?"

Megaera stood. "She's kind. She made him kind, too." And she wished, briefly, that such was in her nature as well, to be so kind.

"Still, should see this. It ought to be fun." Alecto was not listening; already imagining all the rage she'd been channeling into, no doubt. 

"Murderer!" Tisiphone said, jumping up and sprinting in a horrible, inhuman scrabbling toward the door. "Mur-der!"

Alecto and Megaera rose and followed their sister. Alecto ran quickly after Tisiphone, but Megaera refused to do such; instead, she contemplated how the itch that had lived in the back of her head went suddenly, mercifully quiet.

The Queen had returned; the oath was restored.

***

It was Persephone — the Queen — who approached her at the bar. Or what passed for one, in the lounge.

"Believe it or not," Persephone announced. "I missed this place."

"Mmm." The queen was now queen once more, a superior rather than a subordinate, and Megaera was closed-mouth as consequence. Her titan-blood had sang truth, and she did not feel the need to punish once more. "Well, Zagreus is glad you're back."

And he was. And Megaera was happy, because Zagreus was happy: it made smashing him back down into the dirt (in just the way he liked) more rewarding, on the instance that they met.

"As am I." She sat down at the table and Megaera stood, not feeling there was much else to say. "Please, sit."

She sat.

She did not have much choice.

"Just wanted to have a little chat." Megaera nodded, but she felt adrift. Having close emotional talks was _not_ her thing; she might understand emotions, but she didn't really _deal_ with them beyond hurting versus healing.

"Alright," Megaera waved her hand. "I will do as you ask, my Queen."

"None of that." She shook her head, as if a crown was something so easily shaken off. "Just wanted to thank you. For looking after Zagreus."

She did not reply to that; she was not sure that Persephone would wish to know that she and Zagreus had beaten one another to death nearly twenty times over.

"And for telling me, hm," she smiled, lightly. "That there was a way to come home. I'd thought about it of course, but, it sounded ridiculous without you saying it."

"I see," she said. And she supposed perhaps there was truth in that, that such things tended to sound ridiculous until one had heard another say it. Perhaps it had been the will of her fate-sisters, forcing her along the path they had so decreed without either herself or the queen quite realizing it.

"You were well within your rights to take me," she said. "I thought about it happening, many days. I thought it would be a relief, even. To be taken. But you showed mercy. And if a fury could show mercy..." She smiled. "Well. It made me think. Why should we all be fighting so much for this?"

"Well, “Megaera said. "I suppose you are welcome."

"You're a good person. And I am glad, for whatever it is worth to you, that you have helped my son for so long. That you have let me come back here." She clasped Megaera's hand. "Thank you for your mercy."

"Just don't give me a reason to regret it," she said, uncomfortable; she wasn't one to like such praise. Better when Zagreus left his praise simply as a _wow_ or a _great._

Persephone chuckled and downed her glass in one drink. Then she was gone.

And maybe it was hard for her to admit, even unto herself, but Megaera did rest easier after that.


End file.
